


We Few, We Happy Few

by half_sleeping



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, stupid basketball boys
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-07-29
Updated: 2012-12-27
Packaged: 2017-11-10 23:55:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/472131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/half_sleeping/pseuds/half_sleeping
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An expansion on a previous fragment: Kagami goes to Touou instead of Seirin, and basketball ensues.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [5 Schools Kagami Taiga Never Went To](https://archiveofourown.org/works/463631) by [half_sleeping](https://archiveofourown.org/users/half_sleeping/pseuds/half_sleeping). 



It’s almost three weeks into school until Kagami even finds out that Aomine Daiki exists.

“Oh, yeah,” says Imayoshi, a perfectly obliging smile on his face. “He’s our ace.”

“I’ve…never seen him at practice,” says Kagami.

“He doesn’t come to practice,” says Imayoshi, doing up his laces.

“But…he’s our ace,” said Kagami.

“Yup,” says Imayoshi.

Kagami gives up and goes to ask Momoi.

“Oh, Aomine-kun?” she says. “We went to middle school together,” and pauses, unsure how to unpack that statement for Kagami; how to explain their history, and what it means for Touou. “He…doesn’t come to practice.”

“Yeah,” says Kagami, “But why?”

“He doesn’t want to,” says Momoi, then smiles and slips away.

“Because he’s an asshole,” Wakamatsu coughs up, finally, and Sakurai pipes up with “He sleeps on the roof, instead- Sorry.”

“Ah,” says Kagami.

It’s three weeks into school that Aomine is dragged, kicking and bruised and yelling, into practice, jacket torn and knuckles bloody.

“Take a fucking swing at _me_ ,” Kagami mutters over his split lip as Momoi administers first aid, and not gently. It’s part excuse, and part apology: he hadn’t gone up there to exercise his temper, and Momoi’s cry of “DAI-CHAN,” seeing Aomine draped over Kagami’s shoulder, much the worse for wear, had the ring of a much-awaited fear.

Imayoshi smoothes it over, with the correct but unflattering statement that every one of them has wanted to punch Aomine at least once, even Sakurai (who goes bone-white) and this is only the first time, but _never again, okay_?

Kagami shrugs his shoulders with victor’s ease, but Aomine spits until Momoi throws a towel into his face and tells him to apologize for trying to hit Kagami-kun in the first place.

“Fuck that,” says Aomine.

“Fine,” says Kagami. “Momoi, I’m sorry I beat him up.”

“You didn’t fucking beat me up,” says Aomine.

“Oh, he beat you up,” said Imayoshi, studying Aomine’s face with interested curiosity, like a museum exhibit, like he’s memorizing the shape a fist makes in their ace’s face. “You just also returned the favour. Not as thoroughly, but them’s the breaks.”

“I could beat _you_ up,” said Aomine, grabbing for, and missing, the captain’s collar.

“If we quibble over who bent Aomine over his knee and made him cry we’ll be here all day,” says Imayoshi, sweetly.

“Captain,” says Momoi sternly, and Imayoshi subsides. Wakamatsu is near beside himself with glee, but everyone else watches them with a combination of awe and wariness.

Kagami cracks his jaw and looks at Aomine. He’s big, and fast, and good, but he’s never had to fight four or five people at once, back to back with Tatsuya in their misguided youth on street courts. Never watched Alex crack someone’s head open with one smooth move, and begged for lessons in _that_ , too.

“Anyway, I was saying, if you’re part of the team, you should come to practice,” he says.

“Fuck you,” Aomine suggests, and Momoi pinches him. “Satsuki, can’t you be even a bit more-“

“No one’s too fucking good for practice,” says Kagami.

Aomine looks at him then in total surprise, and is this what no one has been telling him, what no one thinks needs to be said about Aomine. “I am.”

“If either of you think you’re taking one step onto the court in that condition,” says Momoi, recognizing the signs-

“Okay start, two hundred laps for fighting,” says Imayoshi, just as fast.

Aomine doesn’t argue, but maybe that’s because Kagami rolls off the bench and starts on them without so much as wincing, but he shoves his shoulder in Kagami’s when Momoi isn’t looking- and when Imayoshi almost certainly is- and says, “Satsuki’s got committee tomorrow. Gates after school.”

Kagami would make fun of him for being afraid of a girl, but then again, so is he, and Momoi lifts her head to stare at them with narrowed eyes, like she’s looking into their souls, and is about to smack their naughty little hands.

“You’re on,” he says, and lengthens his stride.

.0.

After, Kagami sits on the street court and pants, long deep breaths, until he’s capable of speaking again without a quiver.

“So you’re almost as good as you think you are,” he says, to Aomine’s faint smugness, the way he hovers, casting little glances at the hoop. He hadn’t known that Kagami would try that dunk, or that he could. He’d failed, of course, but he’d tried. “You can’t take a punch for shit, though.”

“Shut up,” says Aomine, and, his point made, turns to leave.

“Where are you going?” says Kagami, surprised. “Let’s play again.”

“You want to lose again?” says Aomine, and there’s an edge to it, a tilt to his shoulders that Kagami can’t be bothered to unravel. "The only one who can beat me... is me."

“Why not?” says Kagami, bristling. “I’ve missed streetball since I came back from the states.”

“You studied in America?” says Aomine, interested despite himself, and, well, what’s the harm? Tetsu hadn’t minded being beaten, and he’s got nothing else to do right now.

They play until the sun goes down, even past the time Kagami gets tired of losing, trading trick shots until Momoi stalks past and picks them up on her way home.

.0.

“How did you know we’d be there,” says Kagami, munching on his twentieth burger, while Aomine and Momoi watched him with varying degrees of fascination and disgust.

“Spies,” says Aomine, before Momoi can answer.

Kagami is disturbed that Momoi apparently has no better answer, only a “Mou,” and a helplessly, desperately tender look directed at Aomine, bloomed from watching him roll a ball around his shoulders as she first came into view, bouncing it off the floor and back onto his fingers in one smooth motion, laughing as he did it, at the look on Kagami’s face.


	2. Chapter 2

“Sakurai,” says Kagami, leadenly, “Please tell me you don’t make this asshole lunch.”  
  
“Sorry,” Sakurai says, and looks sad.   
  
“Satsuki can’t cook,” says Aomine, as though it’s perfectly obvious, and reaches for one of Sakurai’s perfect little shrimp dumplings, the tail of another sticking out of his mouth. “Ryou can.”  
  
“Why does anyone have to feed you,” says Kagami, and tries to glare at Aomine lounging at his desk like a king, being fed delicacies.   
  
“I have to eat, you know,” says Aomine, and tips his head up to look at Kagami, smug, smiling. They’re not friends, precisely, but Kagami isn’t willing to roll over and take it the way that Sakurai and Imayoshi do, the way Aomine’s teammates do. Aomine still doesn’t come to practice, but Kagami doesn't always have time for street courts. They're going on.  
  
Kagami brandishes his sandwich, or rather, bag of sandwiches. “You buy your own food,” he said. “ _Buy_.”  
  
“That’s not good for my nutrition,” says Aomine, virtuously. “Hey, is that melon? Give it to me.”  
  
“No,” says Kagami, and raises the bag out of Aomine’s reach hastily. He isn’t really trying, though. Aomine is more than fast enough to take it if he wants.   
  
Sakurai stares at them imploringly. “Kagami-kun, really, it’s okay!” he says. _Anything to stop you fighting_ , his eyes say. _Anything. Imayoshi-san will skin me and wear me as a scarf_. “It’s easier to cook for more people, anyway. We always share food in the dorms.”  
  
“Yeah, see?” says Aomine.   
  
“Stop talking,” says Kagami to Aomine, and turns back to Sakurai. Aomine makes a face at him, spectacularly ugly. Sakurai has never seen Aomine-kun like this before. “Isn’t it hard to cook in there? There’s no space and the fridge is packed with snacks and drinks. You can’t keep any produce for shit and you’ve only got three pans.”  
  
“Yes, but- it’s easier in general,” says Sakurai, peering at Kagami. “I can use the saucepan for several things and the rice cooker does a lot of the work. You can make a lot of things in it.”  
  
“I made gratin in mine,” says Kagami. “Was pretty good.”  
  
Sakurai brightens. “You cook?” he says, hopefully.   
  
“I live alone,” Kagami explains, and smacks Aomine’s hand away from his damn melon bread. “Sometimes it’s easier.”  
  
It’s like Sakurai comes to life, which is a little sad if you think about it. In the ensuing barrage of conversation, Kagami discovers more than he ever wanted to know about Sakurai, and Sakurai’s cooking, and Wakamatsu-sempai’s eating habits, and Aomine’s eating habits, and how Sakurai hates that the oven in the dorm has uneven heat and won’t bake up properly. Someday, he’ll make someone a great wife. Maybe even now. Aomine steals a cream bread in the meantime, and dreams a little of Teikou; pleasantly full, drowsy with sunlight, and someone talking nonsense above his head, lulling comfort. Sometimes he wakes on the roof and doesn't know where he is, who he's waiting for.  
  
Before Kagami knows it, he and Sakurai have an appointment to walk to the supermarket two blocks down after practice, and if Aomine-kun comes along he can pick what he wants for tomorrow’s bento, and also, although only Kagami adds this, _pay for it_. Aomine goes home with Momoi all the time anyway, and she stays as late as coach, as captain. He’s got time.  
  
They keep the carbs and heavy stuff at the dorms, because it’s closer. Kagami brings stir-fries, salads, thick rich stew-like sauces, and flatly refuses to chara-ben. Aomine eats it all, drops snacks into the shopping basket, sneaks in cake mixes and gets his magazines thrown back out into his face.  
  
Sakurai makes tiger bentos, decorates in red, and blue, and black. The sempai are to a man too proud to come to their floor begging for bento like Sakurai and Kagami are their girlfriends or something, but Momoi isn’t.   
  
Aomine dreams of Touou.  
  
.0.  
  
Once the tournaments start, Kagami begins to get the feeling that Aomine is kind of a big deal.   
  
“The Generation of Miracles,” chokes out, off, from any number of spectators. “The ace of the Generation of Miracles!”  
  
“Fucking hell _him again_ ,” groans an entire generation of players, going white on their bench as Aomine swaggers out onto the court, indisputably the star of their starting lineup, alive and dead all at once in his basketball. He’s not serious, even once, but he doesn’t have to be.   
  
Momoi cocks her head at them all over her clipboard, and disappears to other school’s matches and comes back muttering things like, ‘X-kun’s footwork is weaker’, ‘B-san needs to stamina train’, and ‘Tetsu-kun didn’t like my bikini’. Momoi’s also kind of a big deal: a few coaches set their eyes and stare, not at Coach, but at the smile on Momoi’s face.   
  
And over and over again, Kagami hears, _Teikou_. It follows them through the halls and into the locker rooms, onto the court and off.   
  
“What’s the Generation of Miracles?” he asks Aomine, and doesn’t expect to get the answer he does: a laugh, and an expression of astounding bitterness, the way Aomine’s eyes droop with sudden, unexpected affection, how his mouth twists into a clash of smirk and sneer, more emotions than he’d ever thought Aomine was capable of having at once without exploding.  
  
“Our middle school team,” says Aomine. “Three times national champions. The best.”  
  
“Better than you?” says Kagami.   
  
Aomine tips his head up and says, “Damn, I hope so,” as if that’s any kind of answer, as though it means anything, except that Aomine’s just admitted that someone might, _might_ be better than him, and the very idea floors Kagami.   
  
“Well, I won’t lose, though,” Aomine says, and Imayoshi is there, suddenly, smiling gently, and saying, “Dear me, I _hope not_.” This is their year. With Aomine and all of them, this is their year. Imayoshi isn't going to let anything get in the way of that.  
  
Kagami hopes so too. “You can’t lose until I defeat you,” he says, and Aomine snorts, flicks a look to the side as though he expects to see the space of someone else there, someone shorter, someone taller, their absence echoing in Aomine’s existence.   
  
Aomine says, “Don’t count on it. Don’t count on them, either. They’d wipe you and all this lot up and down the court. Every single one of you losers.”   
  
“Aomine,” says Kagami, and Aomine drags himself away from his memories to say, “What?”  
  
“Fuck you," says Kagami almost sweetly, and surprises a laugh out of Aomine, a smirk from the captain. Touou is going for the top.  



	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Interlude ficlet; doesn't fit into the main story (such of it there is).

Obviously Aomine wasn't going to be left in peace to enjoy his Sunday morning. He'd been wakened bright and early by the sound of Satsuki's pipes going full blast- both the water pipes, as she took her early-morning shower, and her terrible singing voice as she warbled through that same shower. _Fucking hell._. That meant that she was going out, and he'd inevitably have to follow her, being dragged along as a bag-carrier and a boy-repeller and it was already making him tired, thinking of having to be around her all day, just because she wouldn't let him alone until he did.   
  
He pushed back his blanket and kicked out of bed. At least she wouldn't be able to dump ice water on him until he woke up again. Changing his sheets and drying the mattress wasn't worth the trouble, and as he went along, his mood only blackened- Satsuki was banging around in there and that meant she was getting dolled up, which meant she meant to make a long day of it- screwing up all his chances for an afternoon nap, and evening nap, and time spent avoiding his homework. At least the toast was sitting on the kitchen table, so Mom had prepared breakfast for both of them.  
  
He chomped on toast angrily as Satsuki swept in a swirl of skirt and perfume, flicking through her phone and thinking noisily.   
  
What? He could tell when she was thinking. She had a thinking face, and it was loud.  
  
"Aomine-kun," she said. "You're up early!"  
  
Aomine crunched on his toast, moving the mashed-up lump to the other side. "You're going out," he said, at last, unwillingly.   
  
"Yes!" she said, and beamed, spreading choco spread onto her toast.  
  
Aomine considered that he was lounging there unshowered and in his track pants and no shirt, and that Satsuki wasn't hounding him to go get changed or clean up, and said, "So?"  
  
Satsuki chewed. Mom always left the toast a little long. "Oh," she said. "Make sure you do your homework! I'm going to be back late, so I can't check it for you."  
  
Aomine blinked slowly. "Where are you _going_?" he said. None of her girl-friends had been texting all night. Satsuki would never drop off the map in the middle of tournament season. On a vital saturday in the middle of tournament season. What the hell was going on?  
  
"I'm going shopping," said Momoi. "Kagamin needs better equipment, and I said I'd pick it out for him."  
  
"What," said Aomine. Kagami? Kagami, _what_? "You're going out with Kagami?" he said.   
  
"We're going to get some things he needs," said Momoi. "Remember to feed yourself, I'm going to have lunch out, and then dinner at his place-"  
  
"His _place_?" said Aomine. "He lives-"  
  
"Alone, yeah," she said. "So, he's cooking! Do you want me to pack some up and bring it back for you, but I might be back a little late."  
  
Aomine simmered for a few moments, tried to think how to tell a dolled-up girl eating breakfast in a house empty aside from her and a shirtless teenage boy twice her size that _she was an idiot_ , and utterly failed. "I thought you liked Tetsu," he said, and glowered.   
  
"I do," said Satsuki, picking her things from all over the room and putting them in her bag- a scarf, her music player, a tupperware. "I go shopping with you all the time."  
  
"But you're going with _Kagami_ ," said Aomine.   
  
"Yes," said Satsuki, and smiled brightly at him before she whirled out the door, before Aomine could think of an answer.   
  
It was a time of great desperation. Aomine called Kise.


End file.
